Posted on October 13, 2011 · Posted in TBI Voices
This entry is part 2 of 20 in the series Steven

Severe Brain Injury Complications: Steven Part Two

In most cases, especially when there is a family member that we can interview, our participants have a pretty complete understanding of what injuries and severe brain injury complications they suffered.  Not only did Steven not have a family member involved in his rehab, he had very little care after his memory returned. Thus, his knowledge of his own injuries and his severe brain injury complications  is limited.

What injuries and severe brain injury complications did you suffer? 

I had a piece of glass go through my eyelid and then cut.   I severed a muscle toward my eye that I turned a certain way.  I just found that out, and it severed a tear duct.  My left shoulder was separated.  It did lots of tendon damage, you know.  Brachial plexus, I believe.  And one of my lungs was collapsed.  And then they say that I had a stroke while I was in a coma, and then the traumatic brain injury.

Do you know what the nature of the, the traumatic brain injury was?

No, sir.  I’ve really never received any care directed specifically at my traumatic brain injury.  Everything I received was just in the intensive care to stabilize me, and then when I transferred to the Med or Baptist Rehabilitation in Germantown, most all of my therapy was aimed at my stroke symptoms.  I never really received any direct one-on-one rehabilitation for the TBI.

Stroke, a Severe Brain Injury Complication

Did they give you any idea why you had this stroke?  Did you have a neck injury that caused that?

I have really no idea.  I didn’t even know about the stroke until afterwards because of the whole left side numbness thing, and my speech was a lot more slurred than it is now, and I can still kind of feel the tingly all over my left side.  But they didn’t really say specifically what caused it or anything like that.  It might’ve just been the trauma or the shock of all the accident and everything.

It is important to watch Steven’s videos to get a sense of the impact on his speech that his injuries had.

Do you know at what point, with respect to your accident on June 26th, that you had the stroke?  

No, it was probably the same day. I don’t have a lot of specifics about it because the first month I was in a coma.  It was between three weeks and a month because I was in the hospital a total of like three month and it was split up between the Med and Baptist Rehab Germantown.  And I was only in the Med maybe another couple, three weeks after I woke up, so.

So sometime around the first of August you would’ve been transferred to Baptist Rehab with your severe brain injury complications?

Yes, sir, in Germantown.  And I could be off.  I don’t have specific dates and things like that.

Next in Part Three – Steven’s Life Before His Traumatic Brain Injury

By Attorney Gordon Johnson

800-992-9447

About the Author

Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447